How do I get the unique elements from an array of hashes in Ruby?

Question

I have an array of hashes, and I want the unique values out of it. Calling Array.uniq doesn\'t give me what I expect.

a = [{:a => 1},{:a =&g         


        

Answer 1

Ruby 1.8.7+ will return just what you have expected:

[{:a=>1}, {:a=>2}, {:a=>1}].uniq
#=> [{:a=>1}, {:a=>2}] 

Answer 2

Assuming your hashes are always single key-value pairs, this will work:

a.map {|h| h.to_a[0]}.uniq.map {|k,v| {k => v}}

Hash.to_a creates an array of key-value arrays, so the first map gets you:

[[:a, 1], [:a, 2], [:a, 1]]

uniq on Arrays does what you want, giving you:

[[:a, 1], [:a, 2]]

and then the second map puts them back together as hashes again.

Answer 3

You can use (tested in ruby 1.9.3),

[{a: 1},{a: 2},{a:1}].uniq => [{a:1},{a: 2}]
[{a: 1,b: 2},{a: 2, b: 2},{a: 1, b: 3}].uniq_by {|v| v[:a]} => [{a: 1,b: 2},{a: 2, b: 2}]

Answer 4

The pipe method on arrays (available since 1.8.6) performs set union (returning an array), so the following is another possible way to get unique elements of any array a:

[] | a

Answer 5

I've had a similar situation, but hashes had keys. I used sorting method.

What I mean:

you have an array:

[{:x=>1},{:x=>2},{:x=>3},{:x=>2},{:x=>1}]

you sort it (#sort_by {|t| t[:x]}) and get this:

[{:x=>1}, {:x=>1}, {:x=>2}, {:x=>2}, {:x=>3}]

now a bit modified version of answer by Aaaron Hinni:

your_array.inject([]) do |result,item| 
  result << item if !result.last||result.last[:x]!=item[:x]
  result
end

I've also tried:

test.inject([]) {|r,h| r<<h unless r.find {|t| t[:x]==h[:x]}; r}.sort_by {|t| t[:x]}

but it's very slow. here is my benchmark:

test=[]
1000.times {test<<{:x=>rand}}

Benchmark.bmbm do |bm|
  bm.report("sorting: ") do
    test.sort_by {|t| t[:x]}.inject([]) {|r,h| r<<h if !r.last||r.last[:x]!=h[:x]; r}
  end
  bm.report("inject: ") {test.inject([]) {|r,h| r<<h unless r.find {|t| t[:x]==h[:x]}; r}.sort_by {|t| t[:x]} }
end

results:

Rehearsal ---------------------------------------------
sorting:    0.010000   0.000000   0.010000 (  0.005633)
inject:     0.470000   0.140000   0.610000 (  0.621973)
------------------------------------ total: 0.620000sec

                user     system      total        real
sorting:    0.010000   0.000000   0.010000 (  0.003839)
inject:     0.480000   0.130000   0.610000 (  0.612438)

Answer 6

I can get what I want by calling inject

a = [{:a => 1},{:a => 2}, {:a => 1}]
a.inject([]) { |result,h| result << h unless result.include?(h); result }

This will return:

[{:a=>1}, {:a=>2}]